What's the optimum number of hens for a rooster to service?

[AgroUrica]

My birds are just mixed breeds, nothing purebred.

I've got two roosters, separated. One has two hens in a smaller enclosure, and the other in a much larger enclosure that has seven hens. Two of the seven are brooding and one has baby chicks.

 

[MissChick@dee]

I think 7 to 1 is a good ratio. Don’t want the girls over bred (they can get ripped up) so I’d get the other Roo 5 more girls.

 

[AgroUrica]

I think 7 to 1 is a good ratio. Don’t want the girls over bred (they can get ripped up) so I’d get the other Roo 5 more girls.

Thanks for the advice MissChick@dee. My wife would love to find 5 more hens for the big guy. A question she's asked and I couldn't answer was how often a hen needs to be bred in order to lay fertile eggs on a consistent basis. Any ideas?

 

[MissChick@dee]

Well Roo’s will breed on a daily basis some have their “favorite” girls. Hen’s are pretty amazing they can store semen is a special sack area for three days (potential 3 fertile eggs in a row). Young Roos (teenage) can be hard on hens as they haven’t learned to woo gals and be gentlemen. The best way to tell if a egg is fertile is to candle them. There’s great information on this site about that too.